If you’re reading this blog you use computers, so I suspect that perhaps you’ve had this experience:
You’ve downloaded or installed a new program and you’re too headstrong to open the manual, so you plunge in and begin to do some cool stuff until you get stuck. Some button is grayed out or some dialog box doesn’t pop up as you expect and for the life of you, you can’t figure it out.
Then, after hours of fiddling, you open the manual, click Help or consult an online resource, and the problem is explained—you have an “ah ha” moment and the process which led to the stuck point is completely clear and you get it.
Not only that, suddenly the logic behind the program makes sense, and your own prior assumptions and way of thinking are revealed as flawed.
So what just happened?
You were able to connect to the logic of the programmer(s) as opposed to your own and an entirely new set of goals and means of attaining them was exposed to you as equally valid—or in fact even more valid than your own previous perspective.
I believe that this is what happens when you meditate: you distance yourself from your own assumptions about how life and universe should be, and open yourself up to a different set of possibilities and influences.
Just as you ultimately have to accept a program’s logic over your own preferences (or uninstall it), at some point you also need to accept what life is offering rather than continue to think that your conceptions of how things ought to be must unfold.
This latter misconception is sometimes called ego and leads to much suffering.
Literature is filled with stories of kings and warriors who learned this the hard way (often running afoul of the Gods which basically mirrored their own arrogance back at them), and you’ve probably experienced a more mundane version of the same reality, perhaps at the bank, market or the dry cleaners.
On a planetary level our species is also learning this lesson, and hopefully it will sink in before it’s too late.
In Jacob Needleman’s “A Sense of the Cosmos”, he describes attending a medical lecture where a doctor claimed that in some aspect of human bodily function, “nature had made a mistake.”
Oh really?
That’s sort of like geneticists saying blithely that because they haven’t yet discovered its meaning, that a large part of our genetic code is “junk DNA.”
Oh really?
There is a field emerging in biology and life sciences called biomimicry that goes in the opposite direction, and embraces and models the designs in nature to create more successful products—for example, I think that a bullet train in Japan is based on the aerodynamic beak of a hummingbird (or something like that).
But of course most of what we are doing (mainly as governments and multinational corporations) is trying to bend nature to how we think it ought to behave. In our hubris, we are not reading the manual, not giving due respect to the obvious intentions of the designer or master programmer, and ultimately we may find that we are the odd humanity out of a system that expels us.
We’d better get with the program and realize that we are a part of nature, and that our ideas and beliefs are hopelessly flawed when compared to the big “What Is.”
Meditation, I think, is a great start. Reading the manual for humanity, like our genetic code, might enlighten our species some, but only if we recognize that before we start tinkering, we need to understand its ultimate objective, rather than our own (like patenting genes)—and consider whether comprehending such higher truth is even remotely possiblef or a limited organism and brain like ours .
But the best way to start is to observe ourselves closely and recognize the common fallacy of assuming we know better in any specific instance. Because if you’ve ever upgraded any software, you know that “the way you always did something” may no longer be valid, and that someone, somewhere, has a different idea of how things ought to be—and they may be running the show—not your monkey mind.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Sunday, May 31, 2009
The Wisdom of Your Cells
Dr. Bruce Lipton is the author of “The Biology of Belief” and narrates an audio book titled: “The Wisdom of Your Cells.” He was teaching medical school when he realized that the “dogma” he was forcing on his students was wrong: DNA does not control life—genes have no ability to turn themselves on or off or “self-actualize”—instead genes are a blueprint for life.
He based this conclusion on several experiments. First, when a cell is enucleated (the DNA is removed along with the rest of the nucleus), it continue to live until it needs to manufacture more proteins (which requires a blueprint for production) or it needs to reproduce (which again requires the chromosomes containing the DNA).
He also found that when identical stem cells were placed in different solutions, they behaved differently despite having identical genetic material. This alerted Lipton to the reality that the environment is a heavy influence on how cells and organisms behave and live.
So then, DNA is only a blueprint for the cells’ behavior and activity.
Furthermore, the effects of environment are not only chemical but also energetic, and energetic influences that are only now being understood, and apparently these energetic influences are more powerful effects, and are often their cause through the intervention of the cell membrane.
By way of example Lipton says, of DNA being falsely recognized as the command and control of cells, if that were true of a blueprint (which is all that DNA apparently is), then you could drive by a housing site and throw the blueprint into the foundation and return a while later and find a completed house. But the reality is that you need a contractor (and a host of other intelligent life forms) to complete the project.
So , Lipton asks, “then who is the architect?”
First, again, the influences of the environment affect the cell, but they apparently do so through (the intelligent) processing capability of the cell membrane, which had previously been considered to be an inert container of the cellular material.
Instead, it turns out that this incredibly thin membrane is truly the “brain” of a cell—all cells have it and without it they would die—not only because their physical structure would collapse but equally important because their interactivity with the environment—their actual “life” processes—would no longer be controlled.
Lipton uses the example of a wafer (akin to a computer processor) to explain how the membrane allows for and controls the exchange of information with the environment – which he says constitutes life.
Life, according to Lipton, is movement, and without this exchange of information, there could be no life.
Many of us know that information is exchanged in the body chemically, but what Lipton’s research has shown is that it also happens on the quantum level—as energy.
So the question becomes, if this energy and information is coming from outside of us as well as inside, what are its origins and what does it mean?
For one thing it means that we are not living in a dead, random universe—there is intelligence manifest everywhere, not just in our craniums.
Perception controls Behavior – according to Lipton the information that comes into the organism through the cell membrane and is interpreted by the brain (in the case of humans), along with our pre-set subconscious scripts – influences and controls our behavior.
Mutation responds to environment and proceeds differently under stress. John Cairns, a noted biologist and whose work inspired the new field of epigenetics, published an experiment that didn’t fit the established belief system and was almost not published, but for his reputation. He found that organisms that were unable to digest lactose and were put into an environment with only lactose for sustenance, actually mutated to be able to digest the substance – seemingly intentionally.
This harkens back to the French biologist Lamarck, whose theories influenced Darwin, and who was ridiculed for first suggesting that evolution is intentional and based on a response to the environment – he was lambasted erroneously for a story in which fish looked at land at longingly until they evolved to grow legs and go ashore.
According to Lipton the human organism begins to process information from the environment before birth through the connection with the mother, and before the age of 6 there is no conscious mentation going on, only the “downloading” of information about the world, mainly through the observation of the attitudes and actions of the parents.
This forms the subconscious scripts by which most of us live 90% of the time automatically, and according to Lipton the subconscious processes a million times faster than the conscious mind, so that if we internalize feelings of inadequacy then no amount of conscious positive thinking will overcome them.
Instead these beliefs need to be “reprogrammed”, possibly through energy psychology, hypnosis or other methods.
The bottom line for me about Lipton is that he uses a biological and genetic approach to come to a similar conclusion or epiphany that I had when comparing genes to computer software—namely that the evolution and intentionality of these processes point to a higher level of intelligence and meaning than what we can attribute to ourselves through our own limited logic and understanding.
He based this conclusion on several experiments. First, when a cell is enucleated (the DNA is removed along with the rest of the nucleus), it continue to live until it needs to manufacture more proteins (which requires a blueprint for production) or it needs to reproduce (which again requires the chromosomes containing the DNA).
He also found that when identical stem cells were placed in different solutions, they behaved differently despite having identical genetic material. This alerted Lipton to the reality that the environment is a heavy influence on how cells and organisms behave and live.
So then, DNA is only a blueprint for the cells’ behavior and activity.
Furthermore, the effects of environment are not only chemical but also energetic, and energetic influences that are only now being understood, and apparently these energetic influences are more powerful effects, and are often their cause through the intervention of the cell membrane.
By way of example Lipton says, of DNA being falsely recognized as the command and control of cells, if that were true of a blueprint (which is all that DNA apparently is), then you could drive by a housing site and throw the blueprint into the foundation and return a while later and find a completed house. But the reality is that you need a contractor (and a host of other intelligent life forms) to complete the project.
So , Lipton asks, “then who is the architect?”
First, again, the influences of the environment affect the cell, but they apparently do so through (the intelligent) processing capability of the cell membrane, which had previously been considered to be an inert container of the cellular material.
Instead, it turns out that this incredibly thin membrane is truly the “brain” of a cell—all cells have it and without it they would die—not only because their physical structure would collapse but equally important because their interactivity with the environment—their actual “life” processes—would no longer be controlled.
Lipton uses the example of a wafer (akin to a computer processor) to explain how the membrane allows for and controls the exchange of information with the environment – which he says constitutes life.
Life, according to Lipton, is movement, and without this exchange of information, there could be no life.
Many of us know that information is exchanged in the body chemically, but what Lipton’s research has shown is that it also happens on the quantum level—as energy.
So the question becomes, if this energy and information is coming from outside of us as well as inside, what are its origins and what does it mean?
For one thing it means that we are not living in a dead, random universe—there is intelligence manifest everywhere, not just in our craniums.
Perception controls Behavior – according to Lipton the information that comes into the organism through the cell membrane and is interpreted by the brain (in the case of humans), along with our pre-set subconscious scripts – influences and controls our behavior.
Mutation responds to environment and proceeds differently under stress. John Cairns, a noted biologist and whose work inspired the new field of epigenetics, published an experiment that didn’t fit the established belief system and was almost not published, but for his reputation. He found that organisms that were unable to digest lactose and were put into an environment with only lactose for sustenance, actually mutated to be able to digest the substance – seemingly intentionally.
This harkens back to the French biologist Lamarck, whose theories influenced Darwin, and who was ridiculed for first suggesting that evolution is intentional and based on a response to the environment – he was lambasted erroneously for a story in which fish looked at land at longingly until they evolved to grow legs and go ashore.
According to Lipton the human organism begins to process information from the environment before birth through the connection with the mother, and before the age of 6 there is no conscious mentation going on, only the “downloading” of information about the world, mainly through the observation of the attitudes and actions of the parents.
This forms the subconscious scripts by which most of us live 90% of the time automatically, and according to Lipton the subconscious processes a million times faster than the conscious mind, so that if we internalize feelings of inadequacy then no amount of conscious positive thinking will overcome them.
Instead these beliefs need to be “reprogrammed”, possibly through energy psychology, hypnosis or other methods.
The bottom line for me about Lipton is that he uses a biological and genetic approach to come to a similar conclusion or epiphany that I had when comparing genes to computer software—namely that the evolution and intentionality of these processes point to a higher level of intelligence and meaning than what we can attribute to ourselves through our own limited logic and understanding.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Conscious Capitalism: Still an Oxymoron?
Conscious Capitalism is a new buzz word for companies to incorporate into their mission statements; the link is to an Amazon list of books on that topic.
To me, this is a wonderful concept, except for the fact that most corporations, their mission statements aside, are built on the mantra competition and not cooperation.
While this is a trend that might be changing (at least according to Conscious Capitalist proponents) and it may also be reflected in the growth of social media, which is also based on cooperation, the sad reality of dealing with large institutions today is that any contact with them is invariably frustrating and stressful.
In the last day or so I have had three interactions with corporate or bureaucratic entities with which many of you will identify and relate:
1. A credit card company that decided to change my number because of a “merchant breach”, causing me massive inconvenience in terms of checking my online statement and re-entering the information into my direct payment accounts. They claim to have a commitment to customer service, but from my perspective true customer service would mean better security and no merchant breach, and a way of preserving my credit card number in the event of such an event.
2. A government agency that I need to call to change an appointment I cannot keep, but the phone message says they don’t answer any more calls because they’re overwhelmed.
3. A phone company web site that informs me I need a pin number to activate one of their services but whose customer service rep has a different story. I need to go through a maze of voice prompts to miraculously get a human, when I finally just say “agent!” out of exasperation.
I also detailed a horrific experience with another technology company that “values customer service” in a March blog about Vonage and how their pride in customer service is truly manifest.
What do all of these incidents, which are unfortunately still the rule rather the exception, tell us about the complexity of corporations and institutions?
First, to call any of their efforts “customer service” is to indulge in Orwellian double-speak.
These companies are not committed to providing service – they are committed to avoiding service to contain costs.
For example, if you have ever heard the message, “due to unusually high call volume, there may be a delay in answering your call…” or “your call is very important to us”, the translation is “we won’t commit money to more personnel because we don’t give a crap.
A few weeks ago I wrote a blog about spending a morning struggling with my computer. The main point was the consistent intervention by technology into a human endeavor—in that instance, writing—and how the problems were compounded by the software’s complexity at the cost of its functionality.
Why was it complex? Without new features users wouldn’t see a need to upgrade. The result of the upgrade? Complexity and frustration.
The Apple genius bar aside, there is no real way to get help on a computer issue from a human resource; if you’ve called a help line recently you surely experienced something like the three scenarios above, with the added annoyance of answering a gazillion questions before the person says “Can I help you?”
Then there are a gazillion more questions and no substantive answers, until you want to scream, like John McEnroe, “just answer the question! Can you please just answer my question (jerk)!”
So to follow up on the main issue raised by the conscious capitalists – what is the meaning of all this? (The presumed trend after all is that conscious corporations will focus on meaning rather than – profits)
Well one meaning may be that if cooperation at the expense of counting beans is actually practiced, lots of shareholders won’t be happy.
But perhaps there will be a new generation of conscious shareholders.
For now, however, the meaning is that any attempt to actually communicate with a large institution is at best stressful and at worst completely futile.
This may be a Zen lesson on a global scale in accepting what is as opposed to what should be, but if corporations don’t evolve to a conscious state soon, the humans on the planet will go insane (if they haven’t already).
Eckhart Tolle talks about this in his book, “A New Earth”, in which he calls corporations “giant egoic entities” committed only to profit. The problem of course that corporations generally don’t have the potential for evolution in that they do not have a conscious observer or sense of awareness (at least not yet).
How would a corporation meditate? Perhaps if all of its employees did so together this would lead to a shift; there is a video on YouTube of Jon Kabat-Zinn teaching a group of Google employees meditation and mindfulness. (Kabat-Zinn has appeared on Bill Moyers and many other programs as an expert in mind-body connection).
It’s been a while since I suggested the possibility that corporations are a new dominant life form, but it must be obvious to even the least conscious corporate entity that without humans to clean up the washrooms at night, they won’t last very long.
So why is it taking so long for companies to truly embrace what the experts are trying to teach them – that cooperation is a better long term strategy than bean counting competition?
So, why is customer service so nonexistent? Why is there still such a disconnect between large corporations’ mission statements and their actual performance?
My guess is that it ultimately comes down to us, the humans, and until we evolve, the corporations we build and work in will continue to be a reflection of our human nature, which at this point is still competitive and largely unconscious.
Maybe social media and a sense of cooperation can take root and sprout before it’s too late.
To me, this is a wonderful concept, except for the fact that most corporations, their mission statements aside, are built on the mantra competition and not cooperation.
While this is a trend that might be changing (at least according to Conscious Capitalist proponents) and it may also be reflected in the growth of social media, which is also based on cooperation, the sad reality of dealing with large institutions today is that any contact with them is invariably frustrating and stressful.
In the last day or so I have had three interactions with corporate or bureaucratic entities with which many of you will identify and relate:
1. A credit card company that decided to change my number because of a “merchant breach”, causing me massive inconvenience in terms of checking my online statement and re-entering the information into my direct payment accounts. They claim to have a commitment to customer service, but from my perspective true customer service would mean better security and no merchant breach, and a way of preserving my credit card number in the event of such an event.
2. A government agency that I need to call to change an appointment I cannot keep, but the phone message says they don’t answer any more calls because they’re overwhelmed.
3. A phone company web site that informs me I need a pin number to activate one of their services but whose customer service rep has a different story. I need to go through a maze of voice prompts to miraculously get a human, when I finally just say “agent!” out of exasperation.
I also detailed a horrific experience with another technology company that “values customer service” in a March blog about Vonage and how their pride in customer service is truly manifest.
What do all of these incidents, which are unfortunately still the rule rather the exception, tell us about the complexity of corporations and institutions?
First, to call any of their efforts “customer service” is to indulge in Orwellian double-speak.
These companies are not committed to providing service – they are committed to avoiding service to contain costs.
For example, if you have ever heard the message, “due to unusually high call volume, there may be a delay in answering your call…” or “your call is very important to us”, the translation is “we won’t commit money to more personnel because we don’t give a crap.
A few weeks ago I wrote a blog about spending a morning struggling with my computer. The main point was the consistent intervention by technology into a human endeavor—in that instance, writing—and how the problems were compounded by the software’s complexity at the cost of its functionality.
Why was it complex? Without new features users wouldn’t see a need to upgrade. The result of the upgrade? Complexity and frustration.
The Apple genius bar aside, there is no real way to get help on a computer issue from a human resource; if you’ve called a help line recently you surely experienced something like the three scenarios above, with the added annoyance of answering a gazillion questions before the person says “Can I help you?”
Then there are a gazillion more questions and no substantive answers, until you want to scream, like John McEnroe, “just answer the question! Can you please just answer my question (jerk)!”
So to follow up on the main issue raised by the conscious capitalists – what is the meaning of all this? (The presumed trend after all is that conscious corporations will focus on meaning rather than – profits)
Well one meaning may be that if cooperation at the expense of counting beans is actually practiced, lots of shareholders won’t be happy.
But perhaps there will be a new generation of conscious shareholders.
For now, however, the meaning is that any attempt to actually communicate with a large institution is at best stressful and at worst completely futile.
This may be a Zen lesson on a global scale in accepting what is as opposed to what should be, but if corporations don’t evolve to a conscious state soon, the humans on the planet will go insane (if they haven’t already).
Eckhart Tolle talks about this in his book, “A New Earth”, in which he calls corporations “giant egoic entities” committed only to profit. The problem of course that corporations generally don’t have the potential for evolution in that they do not have a conscious observer or sense of awareness (at least not yet).
How would a corporation meditate? Perhaps if all of its employees did so together this would lead to a shift; there is a video on YouTube of Jon Kabat-Zinn teaching a group of Google employees meditation and mindfulness. (Kabat-Zinn has appeared on Bill Moyers and many other programs as an expert in mind-body connection).
It’s been a while since I suggested the possibility that corporations are a new dominant life form, but it must be obvious to even the least conscious corporate entity that without humans to clean up the washrooms at night, they won’t last very long.
So why is it taking so long for companies to truly embrace what the experts are trying to teach them – that cooperation is a better long term strategy than bean counting competition?
So, why is customer service so nonexistent? Why is there still such a disconnect between large corporations’ mission statements and their actual performance?
My guess is that it ultimately comes down to us, the humans, and until we evolve, the corporations we build and work in will continue to be a reflection of our human nature, which at this point is still competitive and largely unconscious.
Maybe social media and a sense of cooperation can take root and sprout before it’s too late.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
The Toilet Seat Thing
I’ve always been intrigued by the depth and importance that women attribute to a man’s putting the toilet seat back down after finishing in the bathroom.
When I first encountered this mandate, it was explained to me that when a woman goes in the middle of the night, she doesn’t want to suddenly find herself trapped in an icky basin instead of perched on a comfortable seat.
But even when I’m not in a woman’s bathroom in the middle of the night, I still find that the imperative to maintain this discipline is no less powerful.
Being preoccupied with more weighty matters I have left a woman’s bathroom at various times recently in the middle of the day or evening, only to be reminded once again of this sacred obligation.
So what’s it all about?
Obviously it’s not solely about a woman finding herself with a wet and gross tush.
Most women I know will make the first request with a touch of humor and fairly low key, but I am well aware that if I continue to lapse the reminders will become more forceful and less humorous.
So the real issue here is about respect and being heard. Women want access to your brain in terms of paying attention, and nowhere is the potential for lapsing into daydreaming as great as on the toilet. Often the process is enhanced by needing a newspaper or magazine to take one’s mind off the task at hand.
So there is a two step process for leaving the toilet that lets a woman know that you are not completely self-absorbed and that her needs are equal to your own in your mind.
First she needs to hear water in the faucet so that she knows that you’re washing your hands.
Then she needs to know that between the time that you’ve washed your hands and left the bathroom, she has returned to your consciousness sufficiently to prompt you to remember to lower the toilet seat.
Think of this as an exercise in mindfulness. You need to retain a portion of your attention on something other than yourself, the Lakers, or what you’re having for dinner/breakfast, and if you want to stay connected to a female, part of that attention will need to be on her.
It’s amazing how infrequently, during the course of the day, we consciously control our thoughts and become present. So let the toilet seat be your new mantra, remind yourself by washing your hands, and your social life will be easier and much less stressful.
When I first encountered this mandate, it was explained to me that when a woman goes in the middle of the night, she doesn’t want to suddenly find herself trapped in an icky basin instead of perched on a comfortable seat.
But even when I’m not in a woman’s bathroom in the middle of the night, I still find that the imperative to maintain this discipline is no less powerful.
Being preoccupied with more weighty matters I have left a woman’s bathroom at various times recently in the middle of the day or evening, only to be reminded once again of this sacred obligation.
So what’s it all about?
Obviously it’s not solely about a woman finding herself with a wet and gross tush.
Most women I know will make the first request with a touch of humor and fairly low key, but I am well aware that if I continue to lapse the reminders will become more forceful and less humorous.
So the real issue here is about respect and being heard. Women want access to your brain in terms of paying attention, and nowhere is the potential for lapsing into daydreaming as great as on the toilet. Often the process is enhanced by needing a newspaper or magazine to take one’s mind off the task at hand.
So there is a two step process for leaving the toilet that lets a woman know that you are not completely self-absorbed and that her needs are equal to your own in your mind.
First she needs to hear water in the faucet so that she knows that you’re washing your hands.
Then she needs to know that between the time that you’ve washed your hands and left the bathroom, she has returned to your consciousness sufficiently to prompt you to remember to lower the toilet seat.
Think of this as an exercise in mindfulness. You need to retain a portion of your attention on something other than yourself, the Lakers, or what you’re having for dinner/breakfast, and if you want to stay connected to a female, part of that attention will need to be on her.
It’s amazing how infrequently, during the course of the day, we consciously control our thoughts and become present. So let the toilet seat be your new mantra, remind yourself by washing your hands, and your social life will be easier and much less stressful.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Intelligent Life? (Speculations on Genetics and Software)
I've been thinking about this topic for some time and want to share my latest thoughts on the relationship and implications of computer software and findings in genetics. Inspired structurally by the Ignite PowerPoint concept it's under five minutes in length.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Social Media as a Woman’s World
BlogHer, the women’s blog network, found that 42 million women in the United States (roughly 53% of the 79 million adult women in the United States who use the Internet) participate in social media at least weekly. That doesn’t surprise me, because the more I become familiar with how social media works, the more I am reminded of conversations I’ve had with women and about women.
And I don’t say that critically—on the contrary. It’s just a matter of evolving or adapting to a different mindset.
Let me explain—as a male my focus online has generally been goal-oriented—to get things done.
My main website is like most, a corporate brochure of who I am and what I can offer to clients, along with a way to see what I’ve written and perhaps purchase a book or eBook.
Then when I got on Facebook, and eventually Twitter, I was disinterested at first by what I perceived to be mindless drivel, minutae and chit chat; if this sounds like something an honest male might say about having to listen to a lot of stuff about “a woman’s day” I don’t believe it’s a coincidence.
So as I continued to track the social media juggernaut and saw how it enabled many to thrive online, I began to realize what I was missing. Where I had attempted to use my social networks and status updates in a traditional way—by simply promoting myself and asking people to buy or go to my site(s), I began to study the trend and noted that this was not the point.
Every social media commentary I have read, including the very excellent book Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff , the J.A. Jones Blog, and the Mack Collier Blog - @mackcollier have led me to the realization that social media constitutes an evolutionary shift in consciousness in the online business world.
All of these books, and many more, stress the fact that if you are goal oriented in social media or heavy handed in your self-promotion, you are self defeating. On the other hand, if you listen to the ideas and concerns of others, contribute to a community of ideas, and generally participate without looking only for self gratification, you will see significant rewards in all areas of your endeavors, particularly in self fulfillment, over time.
In other words, social media is not a one night stand—it’s a long term relationship.
Mack Collier, for example, makes it a point to inform his followers on Twitter and his blog that he will simply ignore pitches of any kind from those with whom he hasn’t communicated already; those who pitch him “on the first date” don’t qualify for his attention.
If this sounds an awful lot like the current trend in dating and relationships as “friends first”, preferred by so many women, it is.
As a supposed computer expert I was surprised when I first confronted this reality in discussions with a great friend who happens to be female. At the time I had discovered Ning, and was writing an eBook which I intended to self publish.
I was concentrating hard on the nuts and bolts of Ning—how to upload content, construct the interface, and generally “get things done” when she told me the secret of Ning, or any social network.
“Make sure you welcome all of the new members,” she said, “and acknowledge their birthdays. You need active moderators on the discussion forums to ensure that every post is given a sincere response.”
Wow, I thought to myself, I’ve been teaching her what I thought was technology, but she showed me what I had always prided myself on knowing – why this software is important.
In my tech writing about Microsoft products I had always tried to accentuate its practicality and how it was used, and if possible its human application (communicate visually with PowerPoint, for example).
But in trying to “master” this new phenomenon of Social Media, I had completely missed the point. Either I had dismissed it as chit chat and drivel; or I had tried to force it into a role that it was not meant to fulfill.
While I try to resist wholesale generalizations, what I needed to do was listen to what social media was telling me, the same way I sometimes need to learn to listen, and not try to fix or control, women I know.
As a guy, I still tend to measure my success in quantity—like my followers on Twitter—with each new add I get a little, well, twitter.
But more and more my thrill comes from a sense of contribution. I’ve begun to shift my focus, and while I still may pitch and promote I try to do so judiciously, and mainly with those with whom I’ve established a connection.
More important, when I see something of value, I try to put it out there and share it without trying to figure out how it’s going to get me something reciprocal right away.
What I’m getting is that Twitter, Facebook and other social media are really a giant pot luck or Tupperware party, and in order to get nourished you need to bring something to the table – preferably without too much concern with short term gain.
And again, this brings me back to how it resembles dating—if you’re always worried about who’s going to pick up the check, or how the evening is going to end, you’re missing the point.
And I don’t say that critically—on the contrary. It’s just a matter of evolving or adapting to a different mindset.
Let me explain—as a male my focus online has generally been goal-oriented—to get things done.
My main website is like most, a corporate brochure of who I am and what I can offer to clients, along with a way to see what I’ve written and perhaps purchase a book or eBook.
Then when I got on Facebook, and eventually Twitter, I was disinterested at first by what I perceived to be mindless drivel, minutae and chit chat; if this sounds like something an honest male might say about having to listen to a lot of stuff about “a woman’s day” I don’t believe it’s a coincidence.
So as I continued to track the social media juggernaut and saw how it enabled many to thrive online, I began to realize what I was missing. Where I had attempted to use my social networks and status updates in a traditional way—by simply promoting myself and asking people to buy or go to my site(s), I began to study the trend and noted that this was not the point.
Every social media commentary I have read, including the very excellent book Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff , the J.A. Jones Blog, and the Mack Collier Blog - @mackcollier have led me to the realization that social media constitutes an evolutionary shift in consciousness in the online business world.
All of these books, and many more, stress the fact that if you are goal oriented in social media or heavy handed in your self-promotion, you are self defeating. On the other hand, if you listen to the ideas and concerns of others, contribute to a community of ideas, and generally participate without looking only for self gratification, you will see significant rewards in all areas of your endeavors, particularly in self fulfillment, over time.
In other words, social media is not a one night stand—it’s a long term relationship.
Mack Collier, for example, makes it a point to inform his followers on Twitter and his blog that he will simply ignore pitches of any kind from those with whom he hasn’t communicated already; those who pitch him “on the first date” don’t qualify for his attention.
If this sounds an awful lot like the current trend in dating and relationships as “friends first”, preferred by so many women, it is.
As a supposed computer expert I was surprised when I first confronted this reality in discussions with a great friend who happens to be female. At the time I had discovered Ning, and was writing an eBook which I intended to self publish.
I was concentrating hard on the nuts and bolts of Ning—how to upload content, construct the interface, and generally “get things done” when she told me the secret of Ning, or any social network.
“Make sure you welcome all of the new members,” she said, “and acknowledge their birthdays. You need active moderators on the discussion forums to ensure that every post is given a sincere response.”
Wow, I thought to myself, I’ve been teaching her what I thought was technology, but she showed me what I had always prided myself on knowing – why this software is important.
In my tech writing about Microsoft products I had always tried to accentuate its practicality and how it was used, and if possible its human application (communicate visually with PowerPoint, for example).
But in trying to “master” this new phenomenon of Social Media, I had completely missed the point. Either I had dismissed it as chit chat and drivel; or I had tried to force it into a role that it was not meant to fulfill.
While I try to resist wholesale generalizations, what I needed to do was listen to what social media was telling me, the same way I sometimes need to learn to listen, and not try to fix or control, women I know.
As a guy, I still tend to measure my success in quantity—like my followers on Twitter—with each new add I get a little, well, twitter.
But more and more my thrill comes from a sense of contribution. I’ve begun to shift my focus, and while I still may pitch and promote I try to do so judiciously, and mainly with those with whom I’ve established a connection.
More important, when I see something of value, I try to put it out there and share it without trying to figure out how it’s going to get me something reciprocal right away.
What I’m getting is that Twitter, Facebook and other social media are really a giant pot luck or Tupperware party, and in order to get nourished you need to bring something to the table – preferably without too much concern with short term gain.
And again, this brings me back to how it resembles dating—if you’re always worried about who’s going to pick up the check, or how the evening is going to end, you’re missing the point.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Just Another Microsoft Morning
Maybe this has happened to you. You woke up inspired, with a project in mind and you turned on your computer hopefully. You did this prior to your shower, or as you prepared breakfast, because you knew that Windows Vista would take about ten minutes to start up.
But then, maybe you got preoccupied; the phone rang, there was noise outside, or something else distracted you, and you forgot to get to the log on screen in time, and there was the screensaver already running. Damn!
(This occurs despite the fact that you know that you’ve disabled the screensaver innumerable times).
Now you’ve experienced this before, so you get a sick feeling in your stomach, because you already know that if you log in now, you may lose all of your Desktop settings (logging in as a new blank user).
You know the files would still be available, but you also don’t remember quite how you restored your desktop last time; oh yeah, by running System Restore, which took about another fifteen or twenty minutes.
At this point your great idea, and your inspiration, are slowly starting to fade into the recesses of your gray matter, but you are determined to persevere… You turn off the computer, and turn it on again.
You eat your breakfast, getting excited again about your project or idea, and this time when you see the log on screen, you spring up and sign in well ahead of the screensaver. Success—Windows is loading your user information.
You return to finish breakfast because you know that there are still another ten minutes at least before the computer is remotely usable. You’ve sat through the log in and you know that several dialog boxes will open that you have dealt with many, many times: The Adobe updater, the System Configuration utility (which you’ve tweaked in a vain effort to boot up and log in faster), the Windows OneCare, nagging you about doing a backup (but you have your own backup system because you don’t trust Windows to do it), Windows Update, telling you that there are updates to download and install…
But you have a project in mind, so you decide to wait with the updates. Windows tells you that you can keep working while the updates are installed, but you’ve taken that ride before, and you don’t want or need a sudden reboot or any surprises.
What’s this, another freaking balloon pops up, telling you that there is somewhere Microsoft can take you where you can get solutions to all of your Windows problems.
“OK, what about that log on screensaver?” you shout to yourself, but you are determined to remain calm, and you ignore the pop up because you know in your heart of hearts that there are very few solutions to problems with Windows, and what solutions there are seldom if ever found through Microsoft.
You remember all too well your experience with setting up your wireless network, when Windows promised to “diagnose and repair” whatever was screwed up, only to tell you to check with your System Administrator (which of course is you), or it returned you to the same opening page of a Help File loop you’d been through several times already.
So now, Windows is finally loaded, and it seems ready for you to get into your really great project. You keep a wary eye on Windows Update and OneCare, because they could pop up at any moment, but it’s time to get to work.
So you open Microsoft Word, to a new blank document, and then you remember, damn!
It’s that same default Word template that has the screwed up right margin!
Now, how did you fix that?
You try to remember the last document you created where this happened, and you fixed it, and saved a new blank template with the correct right margin, but you open a couple of more templates and each time you get the same freaking screwed up right margin!
So you drag the margin where you know it should go and you type your first paragraph and you’re feeling good because the juices are starting to flow.
You hit Enter and are about to begin the next paragraph when – crap – it’s the same bleeping right margin staring back at you.
Then you remember something you did once that worked for the current document. You hit CTRL +A selecting the entire document and then adjust the margins again. You hit Enter a few more times and it seems to work. You think, maybe I should save this as a Style or something, but then you realize that styles are really complicated and you don’t want to go there. You’re on a roll.
So you keep typing and thinking and the project is coming along really well until you’ve gone into a zone and an hour or two later you have the document finished.
You take out your flash drive and back it up immediately because last week Windows scared the crap out of you with a bogus “hard drive might be failing – back up immediately” message that almost gave you a heart attack.
Since you have a laptop, you figure you’ll move it there to upload it to your blog and share it on your social networks with the millions of people who will probably ignore it. But, at least that way it will be in three different places and your masterpiece will finally be safe.
You know you shouldn’t but you leave your laptop leave turned on all the time, just letting it go to sleep when not in use, despite the guilt you feel about wasting power but you like to use it to “relax” while watching TV, so you rub the mouse and it comes to life.
You put in the flash drive and a pop up window comes up asking if you want to defragment the flash drive; you decide no, not yet, and move the file to your desktop and open it in Word.
Holy crap – the file is read only again! You remember that that sometimes happens and it makes it impossible to edit and save under the same name but it really doesn’t matter because the project is done – it just has to be uploaded.
But you notice a typo and you don’t want to fix it online because you might want to upload it to multiple places and you might forget so you fix it in Word and try to save it and it reminds you – it’s read only, pal, you need to rename it.
You sigh and resave and rename the file and go to your blog and sign in and put in the title, and then you copy the Word document to the clipboard and paste it into your blog (even though there is a way to do the blog in Word and upload it directly but you don’t remember the password right this minute) and--crap!
It took out all of the spaces between the paragraphs you just typed in Word. You know there’s a solution but you forgot what it was and to do it because you fixed the freaking margins and you were so inspired you actually wanted to start typing—so, sigh, you manually put in the paragraph spaces, and copy that file back to your clipboard before posting it to your blog.
You open Notepad, the generic word processor that never screws up because it’s so freaking simple and you paste the document in there and save it because you can post that version online again without going through and repairing all of the paragraph spacing…
But for a moment you feel good, you did it, you wrote the blog and it’s up there but then you realize—you’d better back up the Notepad version of the file to your flash drive and move it back to the other computer… just in case.
But that can wait, so you go on your social networks and link to the blog item, which is sort of like this article, complaining about Microsoft and Windows and Word, and pretty soon you get a bunch of messages that all say the same thing: get a Mac.
But you know what, you’ve worked on freaking Macs and you know damn well that they have their own set of problems. Besides you want a tool you can use, not a religious experience, and now you’re upset because every time you bring stuff like this up the Mac-heads come out of the woodwork and make you feel cheap and dumb for not buying something really cool.
You were determined not to buy a computer where a streamlined mouse costs $100 so you invested in a PC back at Windows 3.11 and you wonder – why does it still suck so bad?
But you find Macs overpriced and pretentious; you’ve used them and they have another way of thinking that isn’t necessarily simpler or better but just, as they say, different. A good friend has a Mac and you’ve had to get him out of pickles because he’s relatively new to computers (which is why he bought a freaking Mac) and you’ve been able to help him over the phone because, after all, you’re your own System Administrator, for Christ sake!
(But you can’t remember how to get the margins right in Word, or to log into Windows before the damn screensaver comes up).
You resist the urge to write all this in response to the Mac comments, and you wonder why no one with Windows has responded to your blog until you realize… they’re waiting for Vista to boot up before they can get online, and then they have had the same experience themselves and don’t find it all that unusual.
So you decide to run some errands and turn off your PC, because after all you do feel guilty about using up all that power, and you grab your car keys and get the hell out of the house, realizing that tomorrow morning, it will all start again.
Epilogue: You are not alone. Read this email Bill Gates wrote to his staff about his own “usability” experience back in 2003.
But then, maybe you got preoccupied; the phone rang, there was noise outside, or something else distracted you, and you forgot to get to the log on screen in time, and there was the screensaver already running. Damn!
(This occurs despite the fact that you know that you’ve disabled the screensaver innumerable times).
Now you’ve experienced this before, so you get a sick feeling in your stomach, because you already know that if you log in now, you may lose all of your Desktop settings (logging in as a new blank user).
You know the files would still be available, but you also don’t remember quite how you restored your desktop last time; oh yeah, by running System Restore, which took about another fifteen or twenty minutes.
At this point your great idea, and your inspiration, are slowly starting to fade into the recesses of your gray matter, but you are determined to persevere… You turn off the computer, and turn it on again.
You eat your breakfast, getting excited again about your project or idea, and this time when you see the log on screen, you spring up and sign in well ahead of the screensaver. Success—Windows is loading your user information.
You return to finish breakfast because you know that there are still another ten minutes at least before the computer is remotely usable. You’ve sat through the log in and you know that several dialog boxes will open that you have dealt with many, many times: The Adobe updater, the System Configuration utility (which you’ve tweaked in a vain effort to boot up and log in faster), the Windows OneCare, nagging you about doing a backup (but you have your own backup system because you don’t trust Windows to do it), Windows Update, telling you that there are updates to download and install…
But you have a project in mind, so you decide to wait with the updates. Windows tells you that you can keep working while the updates are installed, but you’ve taken that ride before, and you don’t want or need a sudden reboot or any surprises.
What’s this, another freaking balloon pops up, telling you that there is somewhere Microsoft can take you where you can get solutions to all of your Windows problems.
“OK, what about that log on screensaver?” you shout to yourself, but you are determined to remain calm, and you ignore the pop up because you know in your heart of hearts that there are very few solutions to problems with Windows, and what solutions there are seldom if ever found through Microsoft.
You remember all too well your experience with setting up your wireless network, when Windows promised to “diagnose and repair” whatever was screwed up, only to tell you to check with your System Administrator (which of course is you), or it returned you to the same opening page of a Help File loop you’d been through several times already.
So now, Windows is finally loaded, and it seems ready for you to get into your really great project. You keep a wary eye on Windows Update and OneCare, because they could pop up at any moment, but it’s time to get to work.
So you open Microsoft Word, to a new blank document, and then you remember, damn!
It’s that same default Word template that has the screwed up right margin!
Now, how did you fix that?
You try to remember the last document you created where this happened, and you fixed it, and saved a new blank template with the correct right margin, but you open a couple of more templates and each time you get the same freaking screwed up right margin!
So you drag the margin where you know it should go and you type your first paragraph and you’re feeling good because the juices are starting to flow.
You hit Enter and are about to begin the next paragraph when – crap – it’s the same bleeping right margin staring back at you.
Then you remember something you did once that worked for the current document. You hit CTRL +A selecting the entire document and then adjust the margins again. You hit Enter a few more times and it seems to work. You think, maybe I should save this as a Style or something, but then you realize that styles are really complicated and you don’t want to go there. You’re on a roll.
So you keep typing and thinking and the project is coming along really well until you’ve gone into a zone and an hour or two later you have the document finished.
You take out your flash drive and back it up immediately because last week Windows scared the crap out of you with a bogus “hard drive might be failing – back up immediately” message that almost gave you a heart attack.
Since you have a laptop, you figure you’ll move it there to upload it to your blog and share it on your social networks with the millions of people who will probably ignore it. But, at least that way it will be in three different places and your masterpiece will finally be safe.
You know you shouldn’t but you leave your laptop leave turned on all the time, just letting it go to sleep when not in use, despite the guilt you feel about wasting power but you like to use it to “relax” while watching TV, so you rub the mouse and it comes to life.
You put in the flash drive and a pop up window comes up asking if you want to defragment the flash drive; you decide no, not yet, and move the file to your desktop and open it in Word.
Holy crap – the file is read only again! You remember that that sometimes happens and it makes it impossible to edit and save under the same name but it really doesn’t matter because the project is done – it just has to be uploaded.
But you notice a typo and you don’t want to fix it online because you might want to upload it to multiple places and you might forget so you fix it in Word and try to save it and it reminds you – it’s read only, pal, you need to rename it.
You sigh and resave and rename the file and go to your blog and sign in and put in the title, and then you copy the Word document to the clipboard and paste it into your blog (even though there is a way to do the blog in Word and upload it directly but you don’t remember the password right this minute) and--crap!
It took out all of the spaces between the paragraphs you just typed in Word. You know there’s a solution but you forgot what it was and to do it because you fixed the freaking margins and you were so inspired you actually wanted to start typing—so, sigh, you manually put in the paragraph spaces, and copy that file back to your clipboard before posting it to your blog.
You open Notepad, the generic word processor that never screws up because it’s so freaking simple and you paste the document in there and save it because you can post that version online again without going through and repairing all of the paragraph spacing…
But for a moment you feel good, you did it, you wrote the blog and it’s up there but then you realize—you’d better back up the Notepad version of the file to your flash drive and move it back to the other computer… just in case.
But that can wait, so you go on your social networks and link to the blog item, which is sort of like this article, complaining about Microsoft and Windows and Word, and pretty soon you get a bunch of messages that all say the same thing: get a Mac.
But you know what, you’ve worked on freaking Macs and you know damn well that they have their own set of problems. Besides you want a tool you can use, not a religious experience, and now you’re upset because every time you bring stuff like this up the Mac-heads come out of the woodwork and make you feel cheap and dumb for not buying something really cool.
You were determined not to buy a computer where a streamlined mouse costs $100 so you invested in a PC back at Windows 3.11 and you wonder – why does it still suck so bad?
But you find Macs overpriced and pretentious; you’ve used them and they have another way of thinking that isn’t necessarily simpler or better but just, as they say, different. A good friend has a Mac and you’ve had to get him out of pickles because he’s relatively new to computers (which is why he bought a freaking Mac) and you’ve been able to help him over the phone because, after all, you’re your own System Administrator, for Christ sake!
(But you can’t remember how to get the margins right in Word, or to log into Windows before the damn screensaver comes up).
You resist the urge to write all this in response to the Mac comments, and you wonder why no one with Windows has responded to your blog until you realize… they’re waiting for Vista to boot up before they can get online, and then they have had the same experience themselves and don’t find it all that unusual.
So you decide to run some errands and turn off your PC, because after all you do feel guilty about using up all that power, and you grab your car keys and get the hell out of the house, realizing that tomorrow morning, it will all start again.
Epilogue: You are not alone. Read this email Bill Gates wrote to his staff about his own “usability” experience back in 2003.
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